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Meet Canada’s First Cannabis PhD

Cannabis researcher Deron Caplan has just received his PhD in Horticulture from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. And while it’s not a degree in ‘Cannabis Studies’ per se, Caplan wrote his doctoral thesis on the plant, making him likely the first person to do so in Canada and possibly even in North America. Caplan says that he isn’t much of a cannabis consumer but has long recognized the plant’s medicinal and commercial potential.

“There is a need for the science and there is a market and there are people that are growing it and they are going to have to grow it safely and make money … and they can’t just make it all up themselves,” Caplan told The Star.

Caplan certainly isn’t the first to publish research on the plant—his own doctoral supervisor Youbin Zheng has done plenty of research on the subject—but the field is